For years, Eugene Vaught has been a staunch supporter of his local YMCA.

But these days, Vaught is not sure if he will renew his membership that expired last month.

The Ontario resident was fired by West End YMCA’s Metro board in March from his post on the now-dissolved Ontario-Montclair YMCA Board of Managers.

“A lot of that is a personal thing,” he said. “My Kiwanis club meets there, so I probably will.”

Vaught said he is still baffled by West End’s move to convert the Ontario/Montclair and Rancho Cucamonga/Fontana YMCAs into “program centers,” fire two executive directors and dissolve their governing boards.

“Why would they want to get rid of us?” Vaught said about his fellow board members who volunteered their services. “We were not there to make money.”

But the decision to reorganize was solely motivated by West End’s fiscal problems, officials said.

“We couldn’t do it with the old structure,” said Bill McCollum, chairman of the Metro, which oversees four West End locations, including the Scheu Family YMCA of Upland and the Chino Valley YMCA.

“Overall volume went down and there was less money coming in. You can’t stay in business of helping kids and families if you don’t have money. There was nothing left for them to manage there, it was not a branch anymore.”

The restructuring also included a 10percent pay cut to YMCA staff members as well as a freeze on salary increases, McCollum said.

The two program centers are operating with “minimal administrative staff so more resources can be directed to program delivery,” said Debra Anderson, president and CEO of the West End YMCA. The programs for youth and their families were not affected by the reorganization.

These days, West End YMCA is fiscally better off and “on the right path,” Anderson said.

The organization is working to get more people involved and has added five more members to its Metro board – two of them from Rancho Cucamonga/Fontana’s former board.

The annual fundraising events continue as well, Anderson said.

The savings achieved by laying off the two executive directors amounted to about $150,000, said Larry Enriquez, former executive director of the Ontario/Montclair YMCA.

Enriquez is now working as a chief of staff for the San Bernardino County Board of Supervisors’ Chairman Gary Ovitt, while his former counterpart for Rancho Cucamonga/Fontana YMCA, Dianna Lee, now works for Supervisor Paul Biane.

As another cost-saving measure, Anderson plays a dual role – she took over for the previous CEO Bill Hobbs who retired, and she also directs the Chino Valley YMCA.

The dismissal of the Ontario/Montclair and Rancho Cucamonga/Fontana boards “was not a knee-jerk reaction,” but an unanimous decision that was supported by the national YMCA organization, McCollum said.

“It took us a long time to decide,” he said. “No one liked it, but if you’re broke you can’t help anyone. It was the best thing in the long run for the YMCA.”

But Vaught took McCollum’s explanation with a grain of salt. All four local YMCAs paid a sizable sum of money each year to support Metro, Vaught said.

In a letter sent to Metro prior to the reorganization, board members from Ontario/ Montclair YMCA questioned the salaries for the Metro staff consisting of a CEO, controller and an assistant – in charge of “relatively large but not complex” organization.

“We thought that maybe that’s where we can save some money,” he said. “They never answered our questions.”

The board of managers also questioned the value of services Ontario/Montclair received for the dollars they sent in.

“Metro never (wrote) a grant for us,” Vaught said.

But when asked if getting rid of the board was a retaliatory move, Vaught laughed.

“It was one of my considerations,” he said. “But that would not explain what happened to Rancho.”

Another sore point in the ordeal was the dissolution itself – board managers were notified via e-mail that their services will no longer be needed.

McCollum acknowledged that the dismissal of the board was “not handled 100 percent correctly,” and that the Metro “needed to do a better job of communicating. They are good people trying to help families.”

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